Nobody Goes To…Dapa
We’re not used to seeing good roads on tropical islands. Dirt roads, sandy curves, bumpy-pebble paved, yes. But not the smooth, easy-riding asphalt that Siargao provides, making it the perfect beach, palm tree and rice paddy-lined road trip destination that it surprisingly is. When not attempting to surf, we would grab a motorbike and explore the peaceful island as much as we could. So we set off on our little bike towards the north of the island, aiming for the famous Blue Lagoon which emerges at low tide, a deep crater and its crevices filling up with turquoise blue into which everyone dips their toes or dares the other to plunge into from the jutting rock formations above. It is refreshing and beautiful, but the highlights from our little road-trip came from elsewhere.
There is hardly any other traffic on Siargao save for a few colourful and very enthusiastic jeepneys, hybrid trucks originally made from US military jeeps left behind from World War II and which have become the public transport of choice in the Philippines. Often over-loaded with people and goods, their flashy paint jobs always distract from their rickety metal frames and gurgling front-exit exhaust.
We pass endless rice paddies, the cracked earth holding up bright jade-coloured stalks that shine like a thick carpet when the sun and wind collide to sweep over them, a green wave pulsing through the fields. At the edge of the rice carpet are forests of coconut, providing shade for miles and at their feet are mud pools where buffaloes dive and squirm to cool their thick hide. We stop near the village of Roxas to chat to Junas and his daughter Britney who are collecting coconut shells for fuel. They offer us a massive coconut from their garden, the head machete-d off and the juice fresh with a slight tang. I look up at the constellation of palm leaves above, so many coconuts heavy with nectar, hanging by a thread until just right. If only they knew how much a carton of coconut water was selling for in Europe!
We move onto Malinao where the tide is low and the beach is deserted except for four kids. Estella, Diane, Chin Chin and Jarson somehow manage to turn our backs into a shallow water obstacle course as we soak on our bellies more than swim under the sun. And when the time came to say bye to the kids, we head on to Dapa, the “Growth Centre of Siargao Island”. Now most visitors on a tropical island are not exactly drawn to what is supposedly the CBD (Central Business District) of local life. There are no pretty beaches, no hip bars, no perfect waves to catch, it is life as it is, living and breathing. Dapa is where you go to buy your children’s wellingtons, stock up on your rice supply and choose your rooster’s animal feed carefully for next cock fight you are bringing it to.
With a lack of funky activities, most tourists just drive by and in the end, Nobody Goes to…Dapa. It is another town that is definitely absent from all the must-do lists of Siargao. It is one of those places that creeped up on us, won us over and that we pretty much had to ourselves. So we ended up going there three times.
The centre is busy, even positively chaotic for island standards. Two seater yellow tricycles are making their rounds, some pedalled by pure human force, others with a small noisy motor crackling in the background as their swerve through the quiet back streets picking up customers and bringing them to their destination a few streets away. Just outside the main market is the bus station, red, yellow and orange jeepneys line up to take passengers to different corners of the island, loaded with sacks of rice, live chickens and a fish or two.
We enter a street where rice stalls offer regular milled, well-milled, commercial grade and premium grade grains in wooden boxes and buyers bargain for the best grade at the lowest price. There is the specialised egg vendor, cartons stacked all the way up to the ceiling, white eggs, brown eggs, blue duck eggs for balut to be downed with strong coconut vinegar in the street. Next to them are a row of shops focusing on animal feed, pellets for roosters with aggressive names promoting anger-raising properties, promising to toughen them up for cock fighting and beside them multicoloured pills for dogs and pigs alike.
After you purchase your wellingtons, there are other shoes to be bought, sandals, sneakers and flip flops. Accompanying the shoes are racks of spices wrapped in small individual portions. The usual suspects call out – two cloves of garlic, a couple of bay leaves, two spoons of salt and pepper or MSG and then a mysterious bright purple package which I thought was Ube (purple yam) food colouring for purple cakes and ice creams, a favourite in Filipino cuisine, but I was crushed to learn it was actually washing powder. Oh well, still obviously a favourite national colour then!
When the shops end, the row of houses begin with painted brick walls holding up the wooden slabs of the second floor and a roof of metal sheet and dessicated palm leaves. The intricate wood work is crusted with distinctive seaside flakes, hardened by salt and wind. Kids hang out on terraces watching the action below, their feet sometimes dangling above the row of empty paint cans converted into flower pots, each house fronted by their own mini-garden.
Older children play in the streets below, a pair of them skating with one roller blade each, the other flip-flop clad foot pushing along.
We follow the side streets and end up being the stunned audience of a Lady Gaga dance practice, about thirty very serious students in uniform with faces made up, thrusting their hips and grooving to the latest pop music in what looks like the back street ghetto of Dapa. At the fourth song, we squeeze past them towards the port, a simple docking station floating on crystal waters, the mossy bottom completely clear and the island hills rising up opposite. A large group of fishermen are busy. Ice is being loaded directly from O’Gaddi’s Ice Plant Truck into the belly of the ship, frozen blocks crushed through the grinder attached to the back of the truck and sliding down to fill the boxes in preparation for the fish they plan to catch.
And when the household errands are done and the fishermen are ready, there is time to play. There are fewer games more important than basketball, cock fighting and Manny Pacquiao (boxing) in the Philippines, but in the backstreets of Dapa we watch a game of billiard by the sea with a rooster acting as referee and crying out whenever he witnessed foul play. We get invited to a mahjong game in a wooden shack, neon pink tiles illuminated under a single hanging fluorescent lamp shaded by a conical old newspaper sheet and I back out from playing, thinking a table of men so serious they had talc powder in the corner to keep their hands dry in the humid weather, would not appreciate my amateur interventions. Afternoon card games are going on in back alleys, clandestine or not and 2m wide shops were full of gamers with head gear on staring at a screen intently. Open air barber shops painted in cotton candy pink and apricot shades welcome children after school, 5 year old boys getting their hair trimmed and washed, tiny in the tall leather chairs.
To finish it all off, there is the central market. Leafy vegetables and those with crunch, fruit that smells sweet from metres away topped by yellow mangoes with skin so thin you can almost imagine their succulent flesh bursting through. Behind them are the dry goods, pasta, beans, grains and a few stands selling Korean soap operas on DVD. Beyond the corner are several chicken and pork vendors selling pieces and chops perfect for sugba – BBQ, another favourite filipino way of cooking.
But the queen of the opera in Dapa is fish. Rusted teal walls are lit up by red bulbs, the floor is wet and the air hangs heavy with damp salt and fish guts. Fishermen bring in their loot fresh from the boats – anchovies, sardines, tuna, mahi-mahi, swordfish, eel and countless other species. They are weighed in hanging baskets and gutted for each customer. Ladies sit on low stools with buckets before them, selling clams, oysters and some other shellfish I cannot distinguish from snails. It is bustling with everyone buying dinner as the fisherman happily counts his bills, a good day’s work.
And we have fun and we chat and joke with the fishermen, because we have had a good day too. You see, there is nothing exceptionally special about Dapa, except for the fact that it is alive. It is alive with action and games and purple chocolate cake. It has lives similar to ours and lives very different from ours. It has history, it has tensions, it has peace. It has no bars serving ice cold beers or a pizzeria for hungry surfers. But it has stories. If you are willing to listen or lose face over a game of mahjong.
It will always have much more to say than a picture perfect beach or a turquoise coloured natural pool. Dives, plunges, Tarzan cries and all.
